Tag Archives: evolution

Did you ever wish your employees would come to work singing that tune! Well maybe not, but I’m sure you can conjure the image in your mind and I’m sure it has a certain appeal. After all, your employees are the ones you create the value in your products and services; so it makes sense to want to keep them motivated.

As the industrial and then electronics revolution evolved work evolved along with it. Today’s employees are less relied on for labour and manual operation than their grand parents. As machines and equipment replaced manual operations the employee’s role changed along with it. Today’s employees are relied upon to keep the machines and process running. At first it was with wrenches and screwdrivers now it’s with a touch screen. Work simply evolves along with technology. Nowadays, if you want to stain competitive, you need to invest in people. You may go out and get some specialist for a certain task but technology is changing so fast nowadays that today’s specialist is tomorrow’s dinosaur. So hiring employee with learning skills and development potential is your real insurance policy to sustained growth.

If we look at one of the best, if not “the best”, employer of our times, Google, we can learn something interesting. It ‘s not what you might think. When asked what made employees at Google happy, the number one reason was:” they feel that the work itself is rewarding”. Google provides meaningful work for its employees. Sure it also goes out of it’s way to provide a conducive environment that fosters creativity and it encourages the creative process. By it’s actions Google the three key ingredients to happy and motivated employees:

-Meaningful work that is rewarding

-An opportunity to participate and contribute

-Feedback for good work in the form of perks, freedom and a good remuneration.

I recently entered into a discussion in one of the forums on Linkedin. That got me thinking and recalibrating my views on morals & values. The thread’s topic started with the question “How much are you respected as a consultant?” Someone posted: “Respect has nothing to do with performance. It’s a meaningless babble word like “trust, ethics, values and morals” -all which have numerous meanings”. Although the statement is correct, I was irked by the comment, as I believed that: “defining and sharing values is what holds societies together, it provides a yardstick against which we can judge intentions and actions. If we did not have any values or morals we could not differentiate good from bad”. My colleague and I had a good exchange but I had to admit that smoking marijuana in Texas is considered bad (jail) whilst in Colorado it is good, or at least legal. Morals, values and ethics are “babble” words – not convinced about trust just yet- that have different meanings depending on where you live and where you’re from.

It is true that different moral standards apply to different religion and tribes. A good example is homosexuality, (or sexual freedom). It is measured or ranked on a morality scale very differently in Saudi Arabia (Mecca the heart of Islam) than in Europe (the home of the Christians). Regardless which religion, religions have held the monopoly on morality matters throughout history. Interestingly enough the Jews, Christians and Muslims all share the same root and thus the “old testament”, where the guidelines are very clear:

Unfortunately, or perhaps fortunately, religions and God have little in common. Religions are all lead by men; all claiming to be speaking the message of God. Although I not contesting the original message or intent of sharing the “message” with others, religions develop a life of their own. Even the seven deadly sins, although noble in their nature, are a fabrication of the church. History has taught us that power is addictive. Today it’s the politicians that get addicted to it, “power” is the drive behind the men who are behind the religions. Regrettably history has also taught us that power corrupts, and the religion’s elders seldom retire as Pope Benedict did. The system just isn’t perfect.

It just seems that once upon a time, value was measured differently; or maybe we just measured more things than just money. Perhaps it’s because presidents of companies did not make a thousand times the salary of their lowest paid employee. Of course you may argue that today’s CEOs generate perhaps a thousand times more value as an employee than the man on the assembly line; and that it is only fair to compensate him accordingly. Good point, if we take shareholder value as the only measure of success. Unfortunately this is the same logic (along with a few other things of course) that has lead China to become the world’s manufacturer, making things where it’s cheapest. How can Europe be facing some of the highest “youth unemployment” ever measured whilst the baby boomers are entering retirement age? Quite simply, the jobs have moved elsewhere because it’s good business, good for the bottom line. In today’s global economy, not only are you competing against the neighbour’s business from across the street, you compete with a business from across the world, and your neighbours are all over the globe. So the decision to move jobs abroad is relatively easy to make; in many cases it may even be imperative to a company and it’s business model’s, survival. It’s just about money and shareholder returns. There is no room for morality. Time goes by and as employees are victims of the circumstance, the greed slowly siphon’s away the jobs and economic activity these jobs provide. This is the kind of actions and reasoning behind paying CEOs large salaries. The only value that count’s today is money. Never mind honesty or integrity, mastery or excellence, reliability and trust are all just words that look good on the vision statement but are hard to recognize in every day actions.

I happen to live in Croatia, a young democracy with an abundance of natural resources; since it’s inception in 1991, the vast majority of politicians have demonstrated with their actions; that they care more about their own pockets than the people, and state, they are meant to represent. Not only did they managed to squander the previously state owned companies, they have indebted the country to the point that fiscal discipline, mandated by the EU, is now very painful. The answer has been to raise taxes; at 25%, we have one of the highest “Value Added Tax” in Europe; and things are not only taxed once, but every time they are resold. These policies are snuffing out any kind of economic spark and this is reflected in the low investment figures. As we watch the evening news report about the corruption trial of the ex-prime minister, Ivo Sanader, the country is facing tough economic times and millions of people are paying for his greed, whilst the people that supported him are living it up immune by their fattened wallets to the hardship their irresponsibility have caused. What is sad; is that Croatia is certainly not the only example.

Many will argue that we have more choice today than ever before. Choice means competition and competition means a better product for consumers. Thereby stimulating innovation, which spews out new products and more choice. Those who don’t adapt to the ever-changing conditions quickly go out of business. Industries become extinct, just like species in nature; essentially a kind of “economic evolution”, where the only law is the law of the jungle: survival of the fittest. It’s only fair to say that in such an environment, it’s not surprising that people start worshiping money rather than god, wrongfully believing that money is the only thing that makes you happy. In fact if we dig a little deeper we find that there are many things that we value in life; we just tend to forget them. They get lost in the rat race that has become our lives, juggling deadlines and priorities whilst constantly distracted by everything and everyone who is seeking our attention.

So to refresh our memories about what is valuable to individuals, and give you the opportunity to recalibrate your own priorities; I thought of sharing this values map (found at with an open heart dot org).

Much has been said about the power of the moment. Books have been written telling us to focus on the most important time in our lives: not the past nor the future, but the present – the now. And, indeed, the present is where it’s at!
The present is where we make decisions and take action, and it is these actions that determine our future and create the memories that will, tomorrow, be our past. We process many of these decisions and corresponding actions almost unconsciously, but it is precisely this capability that is also our weakness, as it allows us to get distracted. In today’s world everyone demands our attention. Where the industrial revolution gave us more time by simplifying manual tasks (and in some circumstances removing them altogether), the information revolution is consuming more and more of our time. The difference is that now we have a choice: our devices have an off switch – and we should use these more often.

As I look back over the decades at the growth of consumerism, I can see that, as more and more things became available, companies vied for my money by promising me products with “effortlessness operation” and “lasting quality”. During the occasional visit to my aunt’s, I can remember marveling at her electric can-opener, thinking it was really cool. Fortunately, I never did buy one, as it would now be collecting dust up in the attic – along with the other marvels of health and productivity, like a juicer and an old vacuum cleaner. The industrial revolution brought about consumerism, the excesses of which are, unfortunately, visible not only in my attic, but also in the island of rubbish floating around the Pacific Ocean. But I guess this is the price we pay for what we have today.

Now we have the information revolution, with many companies vying for our time and attention: the new currency. Everything is compressed; the mobile device makes us more productive, yes, but it also makes us a slave to others without even realizing it. Being able to read our emails & finalise a presentation on our iPad, whilst on the beach, may enable us to rethink where we can live; however, it also means we don’t really switch off during our holiday. Let’s face it, some of the stuff we can do with our mobile device can be addictive. Have you ever seen a couple having dinner in a restaurant, each of them with a smart phone in their hands, and, rather than looking each other in the eyes, they are both checking their emails! A perfect example of this new trend is a company called Zinga, which makes some of the most popular social games on Facebook. Last year it generated over 1 billion dollars of revenue from its 250 million users. Many of these users are addicted to the games and spend hours playing them on their computer everyday.

As we continue down the “on demand” path, we have more and more choices available to us at the touch of a button. Our propensity to get distracted grows exponentially, obscuring our ability to enjoy the moment without some kind of electronic stimulation. Of course, it’s a choice and we are the ones that make the choice. But choices are often made subconsciously, like the reflex to check your email when you hear the ping of your portable device. I suggest you consciously turn off your devices for a certain amount of time each day – dinner being one of those times, when you can engage in real dialogue and maybe even practice your storytelling skills. Go for a walk and fill your senses with the beauty of nature: the grandeur of the oak tree, the rustling sound of a river or creek, the sweet smell of blossom in the spring or the relaxing feeling of walking barefoot on a beach. Whichever experience is available to you, spending time reconnecting with nature and people is sure to be time well spent.

“If you paint in your mind a picture of bright and happy expectations, you put yourself into a condition conducive to your goal.” Norman Vincent Peale

You may have heard me talking about my wife and how we are complete opposites. I like to see it as a “yin-yang” relationship. Of course this also means there is constant tension, which is both good and bad. Good because we are always exploring the limits of our individual comfort zones, and bad because this process requires an endless amount of patience and understanding. One of our recent debates was about a weekend escape I’d planned for the two of us. After 20 years of marriage, I finally convinced my wife that it was okay to leave our kids at home alone. (Our eldest will be 18 in September, and his brother is only 17 months younger.) Eventually, it was agreed that we should go somewhere for the weekend – but where? This seemed to be an impossible question to answer; there were just too many variables. In the end we conquered our indecisiveness: we just got into the car and left. I figured we would get as far as Zagreb (which is about 25 km away) and then make our decision just where the motorway splits in two. I’m all for adventure and this was certainly testing the limits of my comfort zone. Deep down I believed my wife was afraid of being disappointed; however, not knowing where we were going to end up meant that we had no expectations.

But it is one thing for my wife to choose not to have expectations about her vacation, it’s another when this becomes your guiding principle. Expectations are the carrots that dangle in front of mankind; they pull evolution forward. We see them at the personal level, for instance, a scientist would not perform an experiment if he did not expect some kind of result, or you would not go on a diet if you did not expect to lose weight. However, we also see them at the societal level, where expectations are derived from religious norms and beliefs and guide our social maturity. Expectations are the seeds of hypotheses and science.

You may ask yourself why I chose to write about this; after all, there is nothing new here. But you may be surprised to discover that I regularly observe missed opportunities that are simply due to low expectations. I have also realised that setting proper expectations feeds the “Strength of the Workplace” model of Marcus Buckingham and Curt Coffman, published in their book First Break All The Rules. The model depicts three main elements of employee satisfaction: meaningful work, opportunity to contribute and feedback for good work. Setting expectations reinforces all three elements and enables employee growth and development. The same is true for personal development. Expectations of one’s own performance – be it about staying in shape, attaining at school or triumphing on the sports field – dictates one’s success. Without expectations there are no champions. It is through having expectations that progress is made and learning takes place. You see, expectations allow you to calibrate your efforts and set “smart” (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, Timely) objectives that will help you overcome challenges along the way to your goal.

In consulting, one of our favourite tools is getting people to describe what a perfect day would look like and how others would know it was a perfect day. Similarly, we like to ask the “consulting genie question”: if you had three wishes, what would you change about your work, in terms of your job and the company you work for? This line of questioning raises awareness and helps create a vivid image of an ideal situation – even if it’s only a dream at that moment.

By creating a contrasting image of a better environment we raise awareness, which allows us to see the deficiencies and opportunities for improvement in the current work environment. Once we have this information we know where we’re heading. It is then a simple task to divide our journey into several stages, each with its own milestone. These stages, in turn, will get broken down further into smaller measurable criteria and units that will provide the basis for your planning.

It is easy to set expectations for yourself and your team when the purpose is clear, the task is meaningful and you are contributing to make things better. The other vital ingredient is feedback: expectations don’t work if you don’t measure results or don’t get any feedback about your effort. It is all very well if we diligently measure our performance using certain indicators; what is crucial is that we seek an explanation for any deviation from that which we had expected. The indicators you use to measure performance will take on a new meaning when you not only understand them but also are able to influence them with the quality of your work. Analyse the deviation and learn from it, no matter whether it’s positive or negative in its outcome; that is the essence of continuous improvement.

During the holidays, I had the opportunity to see a really interesting documentary on the story of the earth. Not only did it put things into perspective, it fits rather nicely with some other articles I have written on time. The documentary covered the beginnings of the universe (14billion years) and earth 4-5 billion years ago, all the way to the industrial revolutions (200 years ago). Ok I know you may not understand how you can come up with such a number. You may even question whether it is possible to know exactly how old the Universe really is? But for the lack of a better number or theory I’m willing to go along with the accepted methods from the scientific community. So without getting into the details of the documentary, here is the interesting part. When we talk about billions of years, it is difficult for us to imagine what that looks like. The scale is so large that, without a reference point, we can really make sense of the number. So instead of talking about 14 billion years they converted the scale to a more relevant 14 years, (the average life time of a dog). When we present the information in this way we can now understand the timeframe and relate to it. So if the universe was born 14 years ago then:

– The earth was created 5 years ago; this means that 2/3 of time, as we know it occurred before the earth even existed.

So as you can see, we humans have existed but a mere 6 mins in a 14-year time frame, and we only can into existence after 99.9999185% of known time has already elapsed. So I guess it’s fair to say we are at the mere beginning of our existence and we should be careful we don’t screw up the world for future generations. We are the only species to have wandered and settled everywhere on earth. But what is most interesting is that each innovation in our evolution has allowed the next step in our evolution.

For example it is estimated that we started to walk on two legs about 6 million years ago. This came about because of a change in the earth’s climate. At the time we lived in forests but climate change forced us to leave the forest for the plains of grass. Since you would be in an advantage if you wandered the plains of grass and could see ahead, we started standing and then walking on two legs and cashed in our advantage over our four legged cousins. So what? you may say! It is exactly this kind of change that enabled us to evolve into what we are today because by walking on our hind legs we freed up our hands. and with our hands we learned how to make things. I would also venture to guess that it is this kind of creative activities, making things, which also spurred the development of our modern brains and also distinguishes us from animals. However at this time in evolution things still move relatively slowly, it still took another 4 million years for us two evolve to Stone Age people. That may seem like a long time but as we have seen it is all relative.

Now that man has learned how to fashion tools, we are different from other mammals, we are using our brains to use create things from our environment that give us an advantage. We make things like clothes to protect us from the cold, fashion weapons out of stones, containers to carry water etc. Our ancestors are hunters and gatherers, with the men hunting in small groups and the women taking care of the dwelling, most probably a cave, and picking fruits in the forest. Then one day someone hits two rocks together and creates a spark. Having seen first hand what lightning does to a tree, he gets this brilliant idea and quickly finds some dry leaves and kindle, and he starts striking the two stones and suddenly smokes starts to rise. From that moment on, roughly 800 thousand years ago, we mastered fire.

Fire is awesome! It keeps our ancestors warm and allows them to take in more energy by consuming cooked foods. Before we could only make things out of wood or stone, with fire we start to use clay to make all kind of things. Fire also opens the way for making use of metals, and latter on oil. Fire also brings us closer as people and about 200 thousand years ago our ancestors emerge as modern man. Living in what is considered to be the first societies. They have mastered speech and language, and can now transfer and share knowledge.

Without fire I would not be here today writing this story, as man we not have survived the ice age in the same way. Because it is estimated that about 100 thousand years ago we started wandering the earth as species and the last great ice age came 65 thousand years ago. And although it is believed that is was the ice age (and therefore the sinking sea levels that exposed the bearing straight land bridge) that allowed people to cross from Asia into North America, how could they have survived without fire? The ice age, interestingly enough, also contributes to creating the conditions for our world today. It does so by leaving behind a system of rivers, the Yangtze, the Yellow river, the Nile, the Euphrates, the Tigris etc. where people would settle and the population would later dramatically increase.

12 thousand years ago people make the next big step in our evolution; the start of humans mastering crops. Where as until now our forefathers were counting on hunting to feed themselves, they now learn to domesticate animals and start planting crops. This opens the door for a population explosion. You see a hunter needs roughly 15 square kilometers to sustainably feed his family, as a farmer he only needs 1.5square kilometers, or 10 times less. This big gain in productivity was not immediately translated in a population explosion is just made it possible. Another ingredient was necessary, trade. With the domestication of animals, man now had found a new means of transportation, donkeys, horses and camels. These animals enabled the first long distance freight transportation; and as people settled along the navigable rivers left behind by the ice age, goods could now be moved without too much human effort. Farmers, now capable of producing more food than they could consume, could sell their extra production in exchange for other types of foods or goods. Then people in the settlements along the rivers became the first merchants and wholesalers.

But farming, even with the help of animals to pull the plough, is hard physical work. So necessity, being the mother of invention, spurred man to discover the wheel about 6 thousand years ago. I don’t think I need to explain what kind of and impact the wheel had on our evolution. I think it is fair to say that the wheel is what enabled all machines and itself was a revolution in energy use. With the wheel started his journey to liberate himself of manual effort. This is also the time when the first civilizations start to emerge, the Sumerians, Egyptians and Chinese.

About 1500 years ago we enter the Iron Age. We now master the art of metallurgy and although we could make all kinds of things out of metal, we concentrate on weapons. This is also the era when the world’s religions and Emporiums are born. Judaism, Christianity and Islam are all rooted here. They would emerge individually as religions latter, Christianity 300 A.D., Islam 600 A.D. With the invention of gun powder, 800 A.D. in china, came the next step in our evolution. By mixing different elements we created an unnatural substance with tremendous energy potential; chemistry was born. And although we used this new technology primarily to kill one another, it would later serve as the basis for modern medicine and pharmaceutical products.

500 years ago Christopher Columbus reunited the human species. By discovering America, he reunited our lost cousins that had wandered over the bearing straight during the ice age after 15 thousand years. Unfortunately for them Columbus also brought with him countless diseases that the natives had never been exposed too and together with the bullets of the conquistadors nearly wiped them out! Nevertheless the planet is now one. We have by now mastered the seas and with reached every corners of the earth. There are now an estimated 400 million people on earth, and in just 300 more years we will have more than doubled that number and reach a population of over 900 million people. Just when we start to stretch the productivity gains afforded by the farming revolution, the steam engine is invented in 1712 by Thomas Newcomen. Ironically the engine was developed to help pump water from underground coalmines. I guess Newcomen did not think at the time that his invention would be just the kind of thing that would drive up demand for the very same product he was trying to extract. The steam engine opened the way for the next big step in our evolution. Up until now the energy needed to survive consisted of 70% human muscle effort and 30% animal (not to talk about before the domestication of animals when it was 100% human muscle effort). With the steam engine we got a huge boast in productivity. By getting machines to do our work we freed up time for other things, just like when we freed up our hands 6 million years ago, this is another similar event. With more time on our hands we can think up new machines and make things faster and cheaper, the creativity of man is suddenly released. It now takes only less than 200 years the see the next big step in evolution, the “Otto” motor, the telegraph, electricity and ultimately the telephone. We are now in 1900 and roughly 1.6 billion people roam the earth.

I guess there is no real need to get into the last century, as you are probably well aware it’s development. So to conclude I have put together this little table to shows you the time between the milestones in our evolution.

Walking

6,000,000

Fire

800,000

Language

200,000

Farming

12,000

Wheel

6,000

Iron Age

3,500

Gun Powder

1,200

Steam Engine

300

Otto Motor

140

Electricity

100

Computers

60

Internet

20

It is quite plain to see that the rate of evolution has exponentially increased over time. Many predict the coming of a synchronicity event in the near future that will again create a huge boast in productivity. When machine outsmart people and robotics open up new possibilities. Who knows what the future hold, one thing is for sure, we are living in the most exciting time in our history. The evolutionary steps that before took millions or thousands of years now only take decades. Change is truly all-round us these days, there is no sense in resisting, let’s just go along with the flow and embrace it when it comes our way.